The robotics company invested in by ByteDance and Meituan has gone bankrupt after burning through 600 million yuan.

A robotics company that was founded only 6 years ago has gone bankrupt.

In late August, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court issued a public announcement on the acceptance of bankruptcy applications and creditor's right declaration, confirming that Yinghe (Shenzhen) Robotics and Automation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Yinghe Robotics) has officially entered bankruptcy proceedings.

Yinghe Robotics had an impressive background: it had raised over 600 million yuan in total financing, with its valuation once reaching 500 million US dollars.

Its shareholder list includes Meituan, ByteDance, GSR Ventures, Panda Capital, as well as its controlling shareholder Winner Group (founded by He Jianfeng, son of He Xiangjian, the founder of Midea Group).

Nowadays, its legal representative Shen Gang has been placed under high-consumption restrictions, the company is listed as a dishonest enforcer, its official website is inaccessible, and the updates on its official WeChat account stopped in September 2024. According to sources, Yinghe Robotics' total revenue in 2025 was only 4.33 million yuan, with a net loss of 67 million yuan.

Panda Capital invested 70 million yuan in the company, and its founding partner Li Lun even demanded an explanation from He Jianfeng.

Meituan and ByteDance Both Made Investments

Shen Gang is a veteran figure in the robotics industry. Born in 1972, he holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology. After graduation, he joined FANUC in Japan and rose to the position of chief engineer of the Robotics Business Division. He returned to China in 2014 and served as a director and executive deputy general manager of Shanghai FANUC Robotics Co., Ltd., in charge of the China regional market.

In July 2018, he left FANUC to join Country Garden, set up the Bozhilin Robotics Company, and served as vice president of Country Garden. At that time, Country Garden announced that it would invest 80 billion yuan in five years and recruit 10,000 robotics experts. Shen Gang left less than a year later, and joined Winner Holdings as a partner in September 2019.

In March 2020, Yinghe Robotics was registered in Shenzhen as a first-level subsidiary of Winner Group, which initially held a 55% stake. The company was positioned to develop service robots and intelligent manufacturing platforms in the fields of emergency management and urban governance, and claimed to follow the "AIR" path — AI plus IoT plus Robot.

Its financing process was almost unimpeded all the way.

In 2020, Panda Capital led a 70 million yuan angel round of investment, followed by Meijin Energy, GSR Ventures and other institutions. In January 2021, it completed a Series A round of about 400 million yuan, with Meituan Strategic Investment, ByteDance Strategic Investment, angel investor Wang Gang, and state-owned assets of Huangpu District, Guangzhou entering the market. The company's valuation rose to 500 million US dollars ten months after its establishment. Together with the subsequent financing of over 100 million yuan in April 2024, the total financing exceeded 600 million yuan.

According to the caliber disclosed by Li Lun to the public at that time, the company had obtained signed contracts of more than 50 million yuan right after its establishment, with pending orders of more than 200 million yuan, and had signed strategic cooperation agreements with many large groups.

Many institutions were attracted by two backgrounds at that time: Shen Gang's industry resume, and He Jianfeng, the actual controller of Winner Group — the son of He Xiangjian, the founder of Midea Group.

Unachieved Closed Business Loop

After the funds were received, the business scale expanded rapidly.

In March 2021, Yinghe Robotics signed a cooperation agreement with Shunde, announcing that it would select a 500-acre site in Beijiao Robotics Town to build a global R&D and industrial application demonstration base, with a total investment of 10 billion yuan, and deploy an Industry 4.0 production line of "robots making robots". This was the first 10-billion-level investment attraction project in Shunde that year, and the whole process from negotiation to signing took less than a month.

Five business lines were launched at the same time: emergency management, urban governance, warehousing and logistics, medical health, and industrial intelligent manufacturing. There were a large number of demonstration prototypes in its external publicity, and it also registered a robotics intelligent manufacturing subsidiary in Ji'an, Jiangxi in December 2023.

However, these actions did not bring in large-scale revenue. Industrial and commercial information shows that the number of social insurance contributors of the Ji'an subsidiary was zero in 2024; no production progress has been seen for the 10-billion-level base in Shunde since then. According to reports from industry media, most of Yinghe's orders were for demonstration purposes, and no business direction achieved large-scale sales.

On the cost side, the expenditure remained at a high level. In June this year, Li Lun publicly posted a video to call out to He Jianfeng across the air. In the video, he said that when Yinghe had no stable cash flow, some core executives had an annual salary of more than 3 million yuan after tax, and members of the founding team received a year-end bonus of 5 million yuan; the company also spent 28 million yuan to decorate a 2,600-square-meter office. He also mentioned an order with an extremely tight construction period of nearly 90 million yuan, which required delivery in 47 days with high liquidated damages, and finally the company breached the contract, triggering a claim.

Winner Group and He Jianfeng have not made any public response to this statement so far. Li Lun also claimed that Winner Group cashed out more than 100 million yuan through equity transfer before the company's crisis; this statement has not been confirmed either.

Since 2023, Yinghe has begun to default on employee salaries, and contract disputes have broken out intensively; Qcc records 58 judicial cases against it and 33 closed execution cases, with 100% of the unperformed amount in closed execution cases. After the new round of financing arrived in May 2024, the declining trend did not reverse, and the company became insolvent in September of the same year. Since June 2026, the company has been placed under high-consumption restrictions for many times, and finally the bankruptcy application was filed by its creditors.

Judicial auction information shows that the Chancheng District People's Court of Foshan has seized a batch of mechanical equipment stored by Yinghe in Gaoming District, with an assessed value of 49.74 million yuan. This batch of equipment was first auctioned in April 2026, with a starting price of 34.82 million yuan, but ended in a failure to sell; in the second auction in May, the price was reduced to 27.85 million yuan, and still no one signed up for it.

In addition to the equipment, the court also froze the equity of subsidiaries held by Yinghe in Foshan, Ji'an and other places, with the frozen targets ranging from 179,800 yuan to 10 million yuan, which basically lost their realizable value.

Some suppliers in the robotics industry reflected that Yinghe had long-term arrears of payment for goods after purchasing equipment and parts, "paying a small part first, and then delaying the rest".

Why Did Bankruptcies Happen Concentratedly

Yinghe is not an isolated case. In the past three months, at least three robotics companies that were once wrapped in a halo have fallen into bankruptcy.

The team of Zhicheng Power came from Microsoft, Xiaomi and DJI. Its products are targeted at overseas pool robots, and its annual revenue once approached 100 million yuan. It was finally filed for bankruptcy reorganization by creditors due to the breakdown of the payment collection chain.

Backed by AI unicorn Deep Blue Technology, Deep Blue Robotics once announced a purchase intention of 25,000 units, but most of the orders were not delivered, with salary arrears of more than 23 million yuan, and it entered bankruptcy liquidation in September this year.

There was also CloudMinds Robotics earlier.

Founded in 2015, CloudMinds was once one of the robotics unicorns with the highest valuation in China. Public reports show that the company has raised a total of about 5.4 billion yuan in financing, with the highest valuation exceeding 20 billion yuan, and its investors include institutions such as SoftBank, Shanghai Guosheng, and Zhuhai State-owned Assets. In 2023, it also completed a Series C financing of more than 1 billion yuan.

But only two years later, problems broke out concentratedly.

In March 2025, 21st Century Business Herald conducted an on-site visit to CloudMinds' Shanghai base and found that its previous main office building was already empty. Founder Huang Xiaoqing later admitted that the company "did encounter great difficulties", and was reducing staff, adjusting strategies, and raising financing to solve the problem of employee salary arrears.

Some former employees estimated that the wages and compensation owed to about 200 people in the Beijing area alone amounted to tens of millions of yuan. CloudMinds had more than 800 employees at its peak, and then carried out large-scale layoffs.

In the end, the company failed to solve the problems only with the next round of financing.

The Fangshan District People's Court of Beijing officially ruled to accept the bankruptcy liquidation case of CloudMinds Robotics (Beijing) Co., Ltd. on October 10, 2025. By June 2026, the court appointed an administrator and began to accept creditor's right declarations.

It and Yinghe have a notable common point: both of them once tried to do too many things at the same time.

CloudMinds once laid out multiple product lines such as cloud robots, delivery, security, and humanoid robots at the same time; Deep Blue expanded its business to multiple directions such as cleaning, delivery, disinfection, gardening, and even autonomous driving, medical treatment, and chips.

In 2026, the robotics industry is still one of the hottest tracks in the primary market. But on the other side where the figures of financing, valuation and orders are constantly refreshed, a number of star companies from the last round of robotics startup boom have begun to exit the market.

This article is from the official WeChat account "Pencil News" (ID: pencilnews), the author is Pencil News, and 36Kr is authorized to release it.